Modern automobiles have front seats that are adjustable in terms of fore and aft positioning in order to provide adjustability for leg room of the front seat passengers or the rear seat passengers, and/or to accommodate cargo placement in or removal from the area behind the front seats of the vehicle. The seat track assemblies associated with these vehicle seats typically comprise two track members that are slidably engaged with each other. The two track members are locked together by the seat track locking means at a selected one of a number of available discreet locking positions, thereby to lock the vehicle seat in place at an adjusted position relative to the vehicle floor.
In most two-door vehicles, the seat back member of the front seats are also adapted so as to be forwardly tiltable relative to the seat cushion members, commonly referred to in the industry as "dumping", of the seatback member, so as to allow for ingress and egress of passengers and cargo into and out of the rear seat area. In smaller two-door vehicles, it may also be desirable to unlock the seat track assembly at the same time as the seatback is dumped, so that the vehicle seat (in its entirety) may be slid forwardly thus providing more room for ingress and egress of passenger or packages to the rear seat area. Such forward motion of the vehicle seat may be under urging by the user, or, more commonly, under urging by a spring means associated with the seat track assembly which biases the vehicle seat to its forward-most sliding position. Such forward motion of the vehicle seat upon dumping of the seat back member is commonly referred to in the industry as an "easy entry" feature.
Simple seat track assemblies having an easy entry feature, as just described, will not cause the locking means on the seat track assembly to become re-engaged at any particular point along the track assembly upon return travel of the vehicle seat. Rather, the person operating the track locking means by way of a handle member, must, after utilizing the easy entry feature, manually move the vehicle seat to the originating position, whereat the handle member is released so as to allow the track locking means to return to its locking configuration, thereby to secure the vehicle seat in this position. It may take several adjustment attempts by the seat occupant to accurately adjust the vehicle seat to its originating position. This is not only inconvenient to the person but frustrating and time consuming. To overcome this problem, so-called "memory devices" have recently been incorporated into seat track assemblies having the easy entry feature, which devices cause the locking means to be automatically reactivated during return sliding motion of the vehicle seat at or very near its originating position. This precludes the need for further re-adjustment of the fore/aft positioning of the vehicle seat. Such memory devices not only prevent frustration or annoyance, typically to the front seat occupant, but prevent annoyance to an occupant of the rear seat whose feet or legs might be hit by the seat returning to its extreme aft position upon re-adjustment by the front seat occupant.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,881,774 (Bradley et al.), shows a prior art seat track assembly having both the easy entry and memory device features, and is hereby incorporated by reference. The memory seat track assembly disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,881,774 is heavy and complicated, consisting of a large number of interacting parts that are difficult to produce and assemble. These interacting parts of this seat track assembly must be manufactured to very close tolerances in order for these parts to fit together in proper functional relation, so as to allow for operative correct interconnection thereof. This prior art device is, therefore, relatively costly to manufacture. Moreover, the complicated and very diverse nature of prior art seat track assemblies having a memory feature, including the device shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,881,774, means that they are not modular in design. Resultingly, the individual parts must be designed and retooled for production where the size of the vehicle seat used necessitates a different seat track size. Such re-design and re-tooling for specific new vehicle applications is extremely expensive and time-consuming.
It is, therefore an object of the present invention to provide an actuating device for controlling movement of a vehicle seat track locking device between locking and unlocking configurations, so as to cause a vehicle seat to be locked in place at a particular design position before the vehicle seat returns to its extreme aft position, when the vehicle seat is being moved rearwardly from a forward position after the seatback member has been "dumped" and returned to a normal upright position.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an actuating device for selectively causing the locking and unlocking of a vehicle seat track locking device as aforesaid, which device is both simple and inexpensive to manufacture and to assemble, when compared to existing prior art devices having the same functionality.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an actuating device for selectively causing the locking and unlocking of a vehicle seat track locking device as aforesaid, which device is of sufficiently small size that it can be readily adapted for use in applications where space is at a premium.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an actuating device for selectively causing the locking and unlocking of a vehicle seat track locking device as aforesaid, which device is modular in nature, in the sense that it can be operatively fitted to vehicle seat track assemblies of varying lengths or widths for use with vehicle seats of various size, without any significant changes in the design or sizing of the component parts of the actuating device or the tooling utilized in the production of such parts.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an actuating device for selectively causing the locking and unlocking of a vehicle seat track locking device as aforesaid, which device is modular in nature, in the sense that need of special tools or jigs, and which does not require that the parts thereof be manufactured to close tolerances.
It is still another advantage of the present invention to provide an actuating device for selectively causing the locking and unlocking of a vehicle seat locking device as aforesaid, is lighter in weight than known prior art devices in the interests of energy conservation.